


A Meeting on Post Facto Leave Requests

by GoldsweptSilk (NevillesGran)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Biting, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, Other, Rewrite of Canon Scene, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 14:46:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20116816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/GoldsweptSilk
Summary: Tim is not well when he returns from his...vacation. Elias helps him get back to work.





	A Meeting on Post Facto Leave Requests

**Author's Note:**

> "_Be the vampire content you want to see in the fandom,_" I whispered to myself.
> 
> Previously titled "Cusp of Dawn".

Elias arrived before dawn, as usual, and found Tim leaning on the wall outside his office, attempting to look casual. What he looked was terrible—clammy skin, shaking hands, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool morning. His thoughts raced and he positively reeked of the swirl of hormones that marked desperate human need—and, of course, a certain _ lacking _ scent to his blood.

"Tim. What a pleasant surprise." Half-true. "I'd been growing concerned—you have nearly two weeks of unexplained leave." 

The moment Elias appeared, Tim's sunken eyes had locked on him with a hunger the man was barely aware of, much less understood. Predictably, these days, he translated the stress to anger. 

"You know something is _ wrong _ with this, place, right?" 

"That doesn't excuse your absence, I'm afraid." Elias unlocked his door and let Tim follow him inside. The light flicked on automatically. "Have you been ill? You should call in, you know—"

"Nope!" Tim's false cheer was utterly belied by the shiver that ran through him as he no longer had a wall to lean upon. The sarcasm was impeccable, though. "Guess again!"

"You didn't apply for a vacation..." Elias sat at his desk and started his computer, before looking up with concern. "Are you sure you aren't ill, now? No offense, Tim, but you look terrible.” He gestured to a spare chair. “Take a seat, please."

"I hopped a plane to Malaysia, actually." Tim remained stubbornly standing. 

"You tried to leave us?"

"Yes!"

"And..."

"I...got sick. Yeah. I can barely keep food down. And I can't stop thinking about—" He rallied, rage-fueled adrenaline adding an acrid spike to his scent. “This place is _cursed_ or something! No one can quit, no one can be fired— two– _three_ people have been killed in the last two years!”

“Tim, _ sit_.” 

This time Elias put some power into it, and Tim sank down—into the offered chair, not the floor on his knees (let it not be said that Elias wasn’t kind.) He had stretched his binding thin enough to nearly kill him, but it only left his will weak enough to crack under just a brush of pressure. 

Elias kept a sharp silver knife in his desk for one-on-one meetings with the staff. Biting oneself was so uncouth. He nicked his wrist in a well-practiced motion as he stood and rounded his desk, to offer the few drops that welled out to his erstwhile employee. 

“_Drink_.”

Tim’s eyes widened in confusion and horror but his gasp of breath was pure _ need. _He barely even needed the command to seize Elias’s hand like a penitent and lap at the blood like a cur. 

“Welcome back,” Elias murmured, and stroked his hair as this time Tim shuddered in fulfillment, in the unwanted satisfaction of being kept.

Elias drew him to his feet. Tim was a big man, but Elias had a vampire’s strength, not a human’s. He bit hard into Tim’s neck, hard enough to elicit a groan of pain, coupled beautifully with the realization of what was happening to him. What had been happening to him. How he served just the same sort of monster that had killed his brother (well, not quite the same.) Elias always enjoyed this part, with Tim—and even better, as he drank his fill and sunk his awareness into Tim’s mind, was the pain turning to pleasure, horror and rage muted by the endorphins of vampiric venom and completely overwhelmed by the blood making its way through his body, bringing it back to life and letting Elias and his will in to stay.

Tim stood on his own when Elias finally pulled away. His eyes were glassy but his complexion had already improved. 

“You won’t recall this meeting,” Elias instructed, as he held Tim’s gaze and rearranged his memories to match. “You had your little vacation—which you will file a retroactive request for, incidentally. You got ill. You returned to work, right back to your desk, and felt immediately better.”

Tim gave no indication that he understood, or had even heard. Elias didn’t need it.

He licked a finger and wiped it over the bite mark on Tim’s neck, to speed up the healing process. Not that anyone would notice or comment on one more hickey on Tim Stoker.

“Off you go, then. Close the door on your way out.” 

As Tim turned obediently and walked away, Elias added, “I suggest you spend the morning catching up on filing. Mindless bureaucracy has always been a comfort to me.”

Again, Tim gave no sign that he had heard. Again, it didn’t matter—Elias watched the words sink into his subconscious, not as a Command but as a suggestion that would suffice. By the time he reached his desk, he would be abrasive, embittered, Tim again, but he would at least get some work done. He closed the door as he went out.

Sloppy, really, to have left it open in the first place. There was nobody else in the building—Elias would know. But he hadn’t "lived” this long by letting standards slip.

Though honestly, Tim himself was a slipping standard, dangerously close to falling into true liability. But Jon would expect to find him when he returned from his own existential crisis—any day now, Elias estimated. He could take over the maintenance of his own assistants, then, if he chose to keep them in thrall. 

If not...downsizing was always a tragedy, but there was a reason Elias made a point of hiring people with few friends or family to mourn them.

**Author's Note:**

> Idk, canon-ish plot but instead of eldritch terrors it's vaguely Vampire: The Masquerade-ish vampire factions? Might write more.


End file.
